Stained Glass

This is a very straightforward photograph but it shows how my current project, of using running as a way of exploring the neighbourhood, can lead to discoveries.

I have a number of stock routes and go over the same ground many times. This forces me to look more closely at the familiar, so that nothing is taken for granted. At the same time loops, diversions and the odd excursion are added so that I can find new things. The process of building-in variations is gradual but the photo is the result of it working. Instead of carrying on alongside the canal or using the bridge as a there-and-back marker, as I have done many times before, I left the canal to run a loop in the surrounding streets and immediately wondered why I had never, ever visited this place before.

It is a small hamlet called Hunton Bridge and the number of Nineteenth Century buildings suggest it developed with the coming of the canal, however the pub dates from the Fifteenth Century, so there has obviously been a settlement for a long time.

After coming up onto the street my eye was taken by this building because of the Dutch gables. It houses the Chapel Studio and so I assume it was originally built as a chapel. I liked the idea that a Nineteenth Century church would reference the buildings of another protestant country and so took the picture.

When I got home I could find nothing about the building itself, but found instead that Hunton Bridge is a conservation area, something of which I was completely unaware. Rather wonderfully the Conservation Area Appraisal, completed only last month, is available online and it gives some of the history, pictures of all the notable buildings and early maps showing the development of the settlement. How great is that?

The Chapel Studio is also interesting as it is a stained glass workshop, which carries out new designs, conservation, and restoration. It is obviously a centre of expertise and excellence as it has done work for cathedrals, the Houses of Parliament, and Oxford and Cambridge colleges - in other words national monuments. I don't know how many specialist stained glass workshops there are in the country but it gives me a good feeling to think such a place is within running distance.

It also links with a previous craft theme about the paper mills of the Charante making hand-crafted paper, in the traditional way, for the restoration of old books and documents.

I like it when things come together.